This report contains some disturbing and possibly offensive. Those who have played fury wolves before are advised to proceed with caution. You have been warned

The set

Aldur's set needed a little bit of love. IK and Tal's are revered, Trang's and M'av's get used every once in a while, Gris' exists in many dreams and even Nat's gets the occasional honourable mention. Mention Aldur's and you get curses if you are lucky, shin kicks if you are not.

The set itself has juicy mods at first glance.
90-100 to all resists
+3 druid skills
+1 shapeshifting and elemental skills
150% bonus to attack rating
+45 to all attributes
An additional 15 to dex and 20 to str
50% magic find
15% mana leech
10% life leech
Fast walk and hit recovery
Up to 6 sockets

Perfect for melee, right? Can look at IK in the eye and not blink. Even better, it only uses up four equipment slots. Until you look at the beat stick, that is.

This deservedly gets booed off stage. One, it's an exceptional weapon, two, it doesn't have a big damage multiplier. Or does it? The full set bonus has a very intersting line:

+350% Enhanced Damage*

The Arreat Summit helpfully mentions that this is not a bug but a balance issue (i.e., "feature") *cough* yeah, there was the danger this set might just be a little too powerful.

The build

How best to put it to use? The mods obviously suggest melee, and the weapon is fast. Elemental damage would be great, hmm, Fire Claws fits the bill. But the somewhat icky issue of fire immunes needs to be tackled. I need a backup. "Leave it to the merc" appeared to be the vote winner. No go, I can take a single element sorceress with teleport or an amazon with valkyrie through Hell, but have every FI be killed by the moron? I thought it would be too tedious. Not to mention un-fun, killing every non-immune in a single hit with a highly synergized fire claws and going back to town and whining to the NPCs about every fallen boss that appeared in the moor. I began to look for alternatives. "Do a windy, those guys can clear Hell naked" Hardly a resounding affirmation of the set's virtues, is it? I wouldn't be using most of the set's bonuses but at least they won't be hurting me ... nope, can do better. "Use a ribcracker on switch." And lose the set bonus. "Just ditch the weapon and use Ribbie instead." You're kidding, right?

Could I make physical damage work? That off-weapon ED has been written off as a bug, but really, it's like having your own might aura. A little better in fact. If I could cram as many fine small charms as I could find into my back pack ... wait a second, 6 sockets!

That's right, each unit of damage (weapon and off weapon) gets multiplied eleven-fold. The weapon has a not-inconsiderable 76.5 damage to begin with, so I'm already at 800+ per hit. With a few damage jewels, I'll be able to make this work.

The gear

Weapon, armour, helm and boots are taken care of, which leaves two rings, gloves, belt and amulet slots to be filled. Oh, and the shield. The shield??? Which self-respecting shape-shifting druid uses a shield anyway? The argument against shields goes like this: shapeshifting critters take forever to block, and their skills are interruptible. Death-by-fallen is usually enough to convince druids to drop the shield and go big two-hander. The argument for shields is simpler: it blocks three out of four attacks, stupid. The set provides a nice +65 to dexterity, which makes it easy to reach max block. And with the %AR bonus, each point in dex adds 12.5 AR. Worthwhile investment, no doubt, but what about block speed? The block speed table

Firestorm and Molten Boulder are Fire Claws synergies. I didn't really use these after I got Fire Claws.
Werewolf adds nicely to attack speed, and boosts attack rating further.
Lycanthropy gives a nice boost to life and to wereform duration.
The bear is durable against small or weak packs but has to recast often. Casting it ahead of me to absorb damage works very well.
The sage dies far too often, but boosts every one's life while it is around, quite useful.
Ravens were always kept around, but they had trouble consistently blinding in Hell. The blind duration is quite small as well.
Carrion vine is very useful to keep the life bulb topped up and helps with corpse disposal at well.
Solar creeper was used exclusively for corpse disposal, in instances where Getafix wasn't getting hit at all. A much more reliable source of corpse disposal than the carrion vine.

The forge drops are above average, but out of my 7 hell forge drops, the best is an Um *grumble*

The progress

Firestorm was used until Fire Claws was available. Fire Claws murdered everything until act 4 nightmare, where fire immune knights first appeared. Chaos sanctuary was a pain, but Fazel was powerful.

The general strategy was to keep minions around (bear, vine, sage, and the crows), recasting as often as needed. Which was quite often, as the vine and the sage aren't exactly durable, and crows get a fixed number of pecks. Casting grizzly at an approaching pack made sure Getafix never felt the heat. He couldn't wade into packs like a Ribcracker wolf would have, but he had no trouble taking on critters 2 at a time. Cast the bear, let monster surround him and the moron, and whittle down the pack from the edges. It worked well, very well in fact.

Act 1 hell was easy, almost too easy in fact. Getafix leveled up first at the moor (up to level 70 or so), then at Pindle in nightmare and then again at the cold plains. At level 76, he could wear the full set and then pressed on. Pitspawn took us by surprise, but besides that, there weren't any scary moments.

It was safe passage through act 2. The solar creeper was the hero here, getting rid of the corpses avoiding endless resurrections. No tough moments.

SSzark provided quite a scare: fire immune, extra fast, extra strong and cursed. Getafix got trapped and for a moment it looked like it might be curtains, but Fazel killed a spider just in time for Getafix to sneak out. Dolls could be tanked. Even bosses and champs. 75% block adds a lot of safety here against multiple simultaneous explosions, and individual hits took off only a third of his life. The only one I didn't tank was a Possessed doll, I didn't want to risk it against their insane life. The council was a pushover, even Fanatic Bremm.

Act 4: FI knights, FI venom lords. And more FI balrogs. And even more balrogs. I saw those beasts in every single level. Bah. At the end of it all, there was this joy called the Chaos Sanctuary. More FIs and that god-awful IM. Need I say more? It's a miracle Getafix got out of that without dying. A sizable fortune was spent resurrecting Fazel, though. Three hours at the sanctuary and I nearly made a rant thread here at the SPF. Good thing I was feeling sleepy that evening, no?

Act 5: One close moment with snakes, witches and lancers in the caves. No frenzytaurs or cursing witches at all! But more OKs in WSK3 and the throne level. The old fogies didn't even require a reroll: they came out with absolute chump mods: two of them had LE, two of them teleportation. I think there was magic resistant among them. No auras, no extra strong, nor amp, no mana burn, no physical immunity, sweeet! CB + fireclaws got Madawc down first, after which it was slow progress against Korlic (FI). Talic drew a dud, his weapon barely did noticable damage. Once Korlic was gone, Talic was crushed. Baal behaved: no appendages, no clone until slivered and didn't knock us back too often.

All act bosses were dead easy: Fazel brought their life down and Getafix finished off the job.

It's all the more satisfying that he got through the game without dying at all.

The verdict

Fun factor: High (except OKs)
Kill speed: Good
Style: Yes, very much. When the last time you saw an Aldur's druid?
Item finds: Meh
Safety: Very high. Minions + high resists + high life + block + massive life leech.

The druid's got the glow around him, but he isn't going to get on the catwalk any time soon. In wolf form, he's a biped, looks somewhat like a kangaroo, and has rat/rabbit teeth. His centre of gravity is not directly over his feet, which would leave him liable to falling down frequently. In human form, there's that goat head ...

Those with a Ribcracker or similar fury wolf probably cringe at the thought of a 1-handed exceptional weapon max block wolf, I'll make up for it with a *real* wolf someday, ok? :tongue:

The first thing I thought when I read "Aldur's / Fury druid" was "doesn't the weapon completely suck for damage?" It's good to see you answer that semi-definitively (it sucks, but it can work if you plan for it).

And fyi, I've seen a few complaints about slow-blocking on melee sorcs. I've felt those complaints myself. But, as you know, some FBR and a little patience can go a long way.

Overall though, great work, and a great writeup.

hijack:
<--- with that post count, I need to make sure my next post is something even more inane than usual. :laugh:

EDIT: @HHB, good luck! My set sept is at 3/7 (zon, necro, druid done) and I have IK and Nat's sets ready. But Pindle refuses to give me Griswold's stuff and Tal's armour.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Good luck to you as well :wink3:
About my sept, I have all the sets needed, but I want them to become P/Mat the same time, so I have 4/7 (Tal Rasha, Aldur, M'avina and Trang-Oul) of them at the start of NM, Natalya is currently at the start of Act V Normal, Griswold is lvl 1 and ImmortalKing is at the start of Hell. It's going to take a while before everyone of them is P/Mat, but they're really fun to play :thumbsup: I like the look of the completed sets, especially of Trang-Oul.

My druid Mizor also used Aldur's set, but he was a Werebear, not a wolf, and I decided to go for as much Fireclaws as possible instead of trying to get a decent amount of damage out of that tiny little stick. My merc and Grizzly took care of fire immunes. It sounds like your build was more succesful than mine, but it doesn't make me want to try Aldur's again.

Nicely done, looks like you had a lot of fun with this druid. One of the things I liked about the Fireclaws/Fury combo was just being able to slaughter (eventually) anything that was in your path, its great not having to rely on a merc or a hopelessly weak back-up attack.

Did your Oak Sage manage to survive often enough at that low of a level? I'd think that eventually you'd get sick of re-casting it all the time with how fragile it'd be.